Fire unifies Titusville

Monday

TITUSVILLE -- Amy Ruot was just returning to her office at Farmer's National Bank in downtown Titusville on March 18 when the news reached her phone.

The small city's civic hub, Towne Square, was on fire.

As cold gusting winds fanned the flames and more than two dozen fire crews from throughout northwestern Pennsylvania streamed into the city to save the 19th-century oil-era landmark, Ruot, the branch manager, and her staff started brewing cup after cup of Keurig coffee in the bank lobby and taking them to those gathered outside.

"We all just cried," she said.

The recently renovated four-story brick complex, replete with an elevator and atrium, offices and regional destination brewery and restaurant, the Blue Canoe Brewery, was not just any structure, Ruot said.

"It is the heart, the center of where we are going as a town," she said. "It is also a symbol of what we were, what we had come from."

A small fire that began March 17 in a neighboring West Spring Street building reignited March 18 and traveled into Towne Square, a three-building complex at 110 W. Spring St., where renovations boosted by $1 million in government grants wrapped up just three years ago.

Thanks to the long hours of work by firefighters, the blaze, which remains under investigation, was contained almost entirely to the fourth floor.

The estimated two million gallons of water that extinguished the flames, however, displaced tenants and waterlogged the nearly brand-new ceilings, walls and floors below.

Residents say the blaze, a dismaying, expensive setback for an already struggling city, far from breaking resolve, is serving as a test of community mettle they intend to pass.

The night of the fire, Titusville Redevelopment Authority Executive Director James Becker estimated he received text messages from 100 people, including residents and elected leaders wanting to know how they could help.

The response in the days following made him realize the pride and ownership that the community felt for the building, where everyone, including City Council and the Rotary Club, met.

The positive response was demonstrated in multiple fundraising efforts -- by the Greater Titusville Development Foundation and the United Way of the Titusville Region and the GoFundMe.com accounts launched for the city and the Blue Canoe -- and in the thank-you meal for firefighters that was organized by VFW Post 5958, Titusville Area Chamber of Commerce and Take Pride in Titusville just days after the blaze. It could be seen in the scramble to aid displaced Towne Square residents.

Blue Canoe owners Charlene and Bill Zimmer said overwhelming support they received shored up their will amid very difficult circumstances. Wearing hard hats and boots, the couple took in the latest gift from the fire on a recent day at Towne Square.

It was dripping dirty rain in their dining room.

The cranes hauling away the building's ruined fourth floor to speed repairs had also opened the roof to the heavens. The sturdy wood parquet floor, soot-stained and pocked with pooling water, had finally given up and buckled.

The Zimmers only had an hour to be in the building on this day. That night they were heading to Erie for a fundraiser hosted by a fellow brewer.

They were also making arrangements for their store of beer -- which survived the blaze, as did their brewing equipment -- to be tapped at Pittsburgh restaurants Primanti Bros., Bocktown Beer and Grill, and Meat & Potatoes, and exploring the possibility of brewing their beer recipes at another local brew works. They hope to reopen in time for Titusville's Oil Festival in August. In the meantime, they want customers to know they will cater both beer and food.

"If there was any doubt that we might reopen, after the two or three days following the fire, there was no way I could not reopen," Bill Zimmer said. Volunteers flocked to the brewery, which is also owned by Jeremy Potocki, to help with cleanup.

Everywhere Zimmer goes, people tell him how much they look forward to the brewery's return, he said.

"If anything, the fire made us want to work harder because of the amazing outpouring of support from the community of Titusville," he said.

Fire strikes amid momentum

The blaze broke out at a time when the community was gaining traction on economic decline dating to the mid-1990s, when Cytemp Specialty Steel, which had once employed more than 1,000, closed; and key white-collar jobs left town in the merger of Integra and National City Bank.

More than a century ago, wealth exploded from the ground here after entrepreneurs in 1859 devised a way to pull up barrels of crude that would go on to fuel industry and dominate world politics.

Captains of the industry -- Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller and Sun Oil founder Joseph Pew -- once did business in Towne Square.

No such chief executives stroll the streets now, but elegant mansions that fill neighborhoods in Titusville, Oil City and Franklin stand witness to the region's former vast wealth.

Industries spawned by the commercial production of oil -- refining, natural gas exploration, plastics and others -- endured in the Oil Creek valley for decades. But mergers and foreign-trade policies eventually uprooted key parts of the banking and steel industries that had long grounded the Titusville economy.

When the Integra white-collar jobs left Titusville for Pittsburgh, the Titusville Country Club membership in one fell swoop dropped from about 60 to half a dozen, retired banker and President of the Greater Titusville Development Foundation Larry Fledderman recalled.

Each new job or startup or storefront for cities like Titusville in this era is not the result of a boom, but a product of imagination, will, stamina and savvy long-range planning.

Towne Square was one piece of an emerging, new face of Titusville that is also on display at Opportunity Park, the 206-acre industrial complex on the former Cytemp grounds. Once a brownfield, the area now houses 21 businesses that employ about 300 people.

The city has tackled blight, taking down 22 buildings using Community Development Block Grant funding, City Manager and Titusville native Larry Manross said.

With an eye to snaring future opportunity, the Greater Titusville Development Foundation emerged in late 2014 to connect charitable donations to key community improvements and Titusville completed two master plans.

The first plan aims to position Titusville, birthplace of the oil industry, as the northwestern Pennsylvania executive hub for the Utica and Marcellus Shale plays; the other, to bolster the city's identity as a Trail Town, a destination for cyclists and others touring the Erie-to-Pittsburgh Trail.

"There was momentum truly going here," Becker said. "There are a lot of construction projects ongoing and businesses expanding and they still are."

Residents look for building's return

Final engineering reports are not yet complete and the cause of the fire remains under investigation. The hope is that Towne Square will be deemed structurally sound and safe for renovation and resume its role in Titusville's growth.

"As soon as we are able to establish a plan ... we will tackle it," Becker said.

The demolition alone -- performed by three mammoth cranes that operate at about $200 an hour -- is expected to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Becker said.

No estimates for any possible restoration are available yet.

When the Redevelopment Authority bought the dilapidated building and sought funding for a costly elevator, it was mocked as the "elevator to nowhere."

But that elevator assured accessibility and enabled the government funding that brought the historic landmark back to life. At the time of the March 18 fire, seven businesses occupied the building.

All have said they want to return.

Melissa Bergman, 30, a lawyer, decorated her new office in Towne Square one day before the fire. Titusville's history and small town charm caused her family to relocate from Pittsburgh in September. The fire only affirmed her choice, she said.

As the building burned, Deb Eckelberger, business outreach coordinator for the Titusville Community Development Agencies, and Ruot hatched plans to relocate Bergman to temporary quarters in Farmer's Bank.

Bergman arrived to find the office furnished, complete with a glass jar of chocolates on her desk. Eckelberger days later produced a computer donated by a local businessman.

"It was like everybody had my back. I knew it was the right place to make our home," Bergman said.

Staff writer Valerie Myers contributed to this report.

LISA THOMPSON can be reached at 870-1802 or by e-mail. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/ETNthompson.

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